Harald Laeuen

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Harald Laeuen

Harald Karl Wilhelm Laeuen (born May 3, 1902 in Stolp / Pomerania , † August 29, 1980 in Darmstadt ) was a German journalist and author .

Life

Weimar Republic and National Socialism

Harald Laeuen (1920)

Laeuen studied economics at the universities of Tübingen , Greifswald and Berlin and was awarded a Dr. rer. nat doctorate . In 1920 he joined the Derendingia fraternity in Tübingen .

Laeuen initially worked as a lecturer for the Berlin “ Political College for National Political Training and Education Work ” under the German national historian Martin Spahn . He was "strongly influenced by the ideas of Moeller van den Bruck ".

The "Political College" (later: "National Political College") was a counter-foundation to the liberal German College of Politics . The directors of the college, Heinrich von Gleichen and Moeller van den Bruck, had tried in vain to prevent the establishment of the constitutional college for politics. Together with Hans Roeseler and Walther Schultz, he belonged to the "inner circle of authors" of the magazine Conscience of the völkisch and anti-Semitic German University Ring (DHR). Laeuen saw it as his task "to work on the intellectual preparation of the new building of the empire" after he rejected the existing democratic republic. In 1928 he took over the editing of the Burschenschaftliche Blätter , which he handed over to Karl Heinz Hederich by 1933 at the latest . As a German national fraternity member at the time, he saw himself at the side of the National Socialists on the way to a new political system. In April 1932, he articulated his “outrage over the prohibition of the SA” in the Burschenschaftliche Blätter : “In the ranks of the SA, many fraternities fought in pure patriotism and made sacrifices for their convictions enforce it among the people and bring about the downfall of the Weimar system. "

After the handover of power to the NSDAP and its German-national alliance partners, he accused the academics of having failed as a class in contrast to the student communities. In particular, Laeuen stated that “the student body […] had to remain revolutionary in relation to the Weimar system. But it did not have the strength to develop from its corporate thinking a state-mindedness that would have secured the university and the corporation a new rank. Rather, this rank must first be fought for after, in contrast to the student communities, the academic class failed as a class because it remained an intellectual child of the bourgeois age. [...] “The total state penetrates“ ruthlessly all areas of public life, it naturally also includes the university and with it the student associations. ”“ Today, ”says Laeuen,“ we have to assume that the student Corporation has to be a member of the new state […]. This knowledge has already led to the decision that fraternities with all their active and inactive members have joined the SA ”.

After becoming a member of the DNVP, he switched to the NSDAP in 1933. While working for the Burschenschaftliche Blätter, he was editor-in-chief of the Pommerschen Tagespost (Stettin) from 1931 to 1933 , and then the Schlesische Zeitung (Breslau). From 1935 to 1941 he was the foreign correspondent for the Leipziger Neuesten Nachrichten in Warsaw , the Hamburger Fremdblatt and the Münchener Neuesten Nachrichten . He also worked for the magazines The Team , Eastern Europe , Kyrios and Jonsbrog .

After 1933 he wrote numerous articles for the two nationalist and anti-Semitic newspapers Deutsche Rundschau in Poland and Deutsche Nachrichten of German political associations in Poland, the Young German Party and the German Unification.

Laeuen was a member of the Reich Association of the German Press .

After the end of National Socialism

Laeuen initially worked as an editor of the Berliner Zeitung (1945–1948) published by the Berlin magistrate , then as its archive manager (1948–1949), and later at the Berlin evening newspaper Der Kurier . From 1948 he also worked as a freelance journalist in Hamburg, then moved entirely to the West and became editor of the newspaper Die Welt . In the 1950s he participated in various circulars that collected and disseminated information about the Eastern Bloc, and then published his own information service under the title "Ost-Dienst". At the beginning of the fifties he became editor-in-chief of the displaced newspaper "Ost-West-Kurier" in Frankfurt am Main. From 1964 to 1967 he worked for Deutschlandfunk , initially for one year as head of the Poland editorial team, then for two years as head of the main European program department, the structure of which he significantly shaped in those years. In addition to a large number of publications in various magazines and publications, his books “Polish Tragedy” (1954) and “Poland after the Fall of Gomulka” (1972) are particularly noteworthy.

From 1951 to 1957, Laeuen was a board member of the German Society for Eastern European Studies (DGO), founded in 1913, and a member until his death in 1980. He was the author of various monographs on Eastern Europe, which appeared primarily during the National Socialist era. He published 27 articles in the journal Eastern Europe published by the DGO . Harald Laeuen's scientific legacy is looked after by the Herder Institute in Marburg.

Fonts

  • Historical legend and land politics of the Czechs, in: Loesch, Karl C. von (Ed.), Volk unter Völkern (Books of Germanism, Vol. 1), Breslau 1928, pp. 267–285.
  • Czech land policy (series The Middle East), Berlin 1930.
  • Eastern Agrarian Revolution and Peasant Policy, Korn Verlag, Breslau 1934.
  • Polish interlude. An episode of Ostpolitik, Hans v. Hugo Verlag, Berlin 1940.
  • Marshal Antonescu, Essen Publishing House, Essen 1943.
  • Polish tragedy, Steingrüben Verlag, Stuttgart 1954.
  • Poland after the fall of Gomulka (series of publications by the study society for time problems , Zeitpolitik series), Seewald Verlag, Stuttgart 1972.

literature

  • Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Volume 3: I-L. Winter, Heidelberg 1999, ISBN 3-8253-0865-0 , pp. 216-217.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Volume 3: I-L. Winter, Heidelberg 1999, ISBN 3-8253-0865-0 , pp. 216–217, here: p. 216.
  2. ↑ Erich Nickel, October 24, 1920: The founding of the German University of Politics , in: Berlinische Monatsschrift, issue 6/2000, pp. 100-105, here: pp. 104f.
  3. ↑ Claudia Kemper, "The Conscience" 1919-1925. Communication and networking among young conservatives, Munich 2011, p. 319
  4. ↑ Heike Ströle-Bühler: The student anti-Semitism in the Weimar Republic. An analysis of the Burschenschaftliche Blätter 1891 to 1933 , Frankfurt 1991, p. 142
  5. ↑ Here as well as with the following information on the vita, unless otherwise stated: Helge Dvorak, Christian Hünemörder: Biographisches Lexikon der Deutschen Burschenschaft: Politiker , Vol. I / Part 2 (FH), Heidelberg 1999, pp. 270–271, here : P. 271. The Burschenschaftliche Lexikon in the article on Hederich dates the beginning of the editor to 1932, in the article on Laeuen the end of the editor to 1933. It is possible, but not clear, whether there is an error in one of the two cases or whether there is a common one There was editor-in-chief.
  6. ^ Hans Peter Bleuel / Ernst Klinnert, German students on the way to the Third Reich. Ideologies - programs - actions. 1918-1935, Gütersloh 1967, p. 234; see also: Burschenschaftliche Blätter, April 1932, p. 268: “In the ranks of the SA, many fraternity members fought in pure love of their country and made sacrifices for their convictions. […] Our indignation […] is not guided by any party-political, but general national motives. […] From our hundred-year history we draw the certainty that such oppressive measures will not avert the downfall of this [Weimar] system and that the spirit of national warfare and defensive spirit will ultimately prevail in our people. "
  7. ^ Hans Peter Bleuel, Ernst Klinnert, German Students on the Way to the Third Reich. Ideologies - programs - actions. 1918-1935, Gütersloh 1967, p. 251.
  8. ↑ a b Burschenschaftliche Blätter, May 1933, Issue 9, p. 208.
  9. ↑ See e.g. E.g. Harald Laeuen, Moeller van den Bruck, On the ten year anniversary of the anniversary of his death, in: The team, May 1935.
  10. ↑ See e.g. E.g. Harald Laeuen, Poland after the Vienna arbitration, in: Osteuropa, Vol. 14, 1938/39, pp. 250–262.
  11. ^ Matthias Niendorf, Minorities on the Border. Germans and Poles in the Flatow (Zlotow) and Zempelberg (Sepolno Krajenskie) districts 1900/1939, Wiesbaden 1996, p. 213; Beata Dorota Lakeberg, The German minority press in Poland 1918-1939 and its image of Poland and the Jews, 2010, passim.
  12. ↑ Deutschlandfunk, press release, September 2, 1980.
  13. ↑ DSHI (Herder Institute document collection, archive signature: DSHI 100 Laeuen).
personal data
SURNAME Laeuen, Harald
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Laeuen, Harald Karl Wilhelm (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and author
DATE OF BIRTH May 3, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Stolp / Pomerania
DATE OF DEATH August 29, 1980
Place of death Darmstadt